1 # Copyright (c) 2011 The Chromium OS Authors.
3 # SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0+
9 This tool is a Python script which:
10 - Creates patch directly from your branch
11 - Cleans them up by removing unwanted tags
12 - Inserts a cover letter with change lists
13 - Runs the patches through checkpatch.pl and its own checks
14 - Optionally emails them out to selected people
16 It is intended to automate patch creation and make it a less
17 error-prone process. It is useful for U-Boot and Linux work so far,
18 since it uses the checkpatch.pl script.
20 It is configured almost entirely by tags it finds in your commits.
21 This means that you can work on a number of different branches at
22 once, and keep the settings with each branch rather than having to
23 git format-patch, git send-email, etc. with the correct parameters
24 each time. So for example if you put:
26 Series-to: fred.blogs@napier.co.nz
28 in one of your commits, the series will be sent there.
30 In Linux and U-Boot this will also call get_maintainer.pl on each of your
31 patches automatically (unless you use -m to disable this).
37 This tool requires a certain way of working:
39 - Maintain a number of branches, one for each patch series you are
41 - Add tags into the commits within each branch to indicate where the
42 series should be sent, cover letter, version, etc. Most of these are
43 normally in the top commit so it is easy to change them with 'git
45 - Each branch tracks the upstream branch, so that this script can
46 automatically determine the number of commits in it (optional)
47 - Check out a branch, and run this script to create and send out your
48 patches. Weeks later, change the patches and repeat, knowing that you
49 will get a consistent result each time.
55 For most cases of using patman for U-Boot development, patman can use the
56 file 'doc/git-mailrc' in your U-Boot directory to supply the email aliases
57 you need. To make this work, tell git where to find the file by typing
60 git config sendemail.aliasesfile doc/git-mailrc
62 For both Linux and U-Boot the 'scripts/get_maintainer.pl' handles figuring
63 out where to send patches pretty well.
65 During the first run patman creates a config file for you by taking the default
66 user name and email address from the global .gitconfig file.
68 To add your own, create a file ~/.patman like this:
74 me: Simon Glass <sjg@chromium.org>
76 u-boot: U-Boot Mailing List <u-boot@lists.denx.de>
77 wolfgang: Wolfgang Denk <wd@denx.de>
78 others: Mike Frysinger <vapier@gentoo.org>, Fred Bloggs <f.bloggs@napier.net>
82 Aliases are recursive.
84 The checkpatch.pl in the U-Boot tools/ subdirectory will be located and
85 used. Failing that you can put it into your path or ~/bin/checkpatch.pl
88 If you want to change the defaults for patman's command-line arguments,
89 you can add a [settings] section to your .patman file. This can be used
90 for any command line option by referring to the "dest" for the option in
91 patman.py. For reference, the useful ones (at the moment) shown below
92 (all with the non-default setting):
104 If you want to adjust settings (or aliases) that affect just a single
105 project you can add a section that looks like [project_settings] or
106 [project_alias]. If you want to use tags for your linux work, you could
122 $ ./tools/patman/patman -n
124 If it can't detect the upstream branch, try telling it how many patches
125 there are in your series:
127 $ ./tools/patman/patman -n -c5
129 This will create patch files in your current directory and tell you who
130 it is thinking of sending them to. Take a look at the patch files.
132 $ ./tools/patman/patman -n -c5 -s1
134 Similar to the above, but skip the first commit and take the next 5. This
135 is useful if your top commit is for setting up testing.
141 To make this script useful you must add tags like the following into any
142 commit. Most can only appear once in the whole series.
144 Series-to: email / alias
145 Email address / alias to send patch series to (you can add this
148 Series-cc: email / alias, ...
149 Email address / alias to Cc patch series to (you can add this
153 Sets the version number of this patch series
155 Series-prefix: prefix
156 Sets the subject prefix. Normally empty but it can be RFC for
157 RFC patches, or RESEND if you are being ignored. The patch subject
158 is like [RFC PATCH] or [RESEND PATCH].
159 In the meantime, git format.subjectprefix option will be added as
160 well. If your format.subjectprefix is set to InternalProject, then
161 the patch shows like: [InternalProject][RFC/RESEND PATCH]
164 Sets the name of the series. You don't need to have a name, and
165 patman does not yet use it, but it is convenient to put the branch
166 name here to help you keep track of multiple upstreaming efforts.
169 This is the patch set title
173 Sets the cover letter contents for the series. The first line
174 will become the subject of the cover letter
176 Cover-letter-cc: email / alias
177 Additional email addresses / aliases to send cover letter to (you
178 can add this multiple times)
185 Sets some notes for the patch series, which you don't want in
186 the commit messages, but do want to send, The notes are joined
187 together and put after the cover letter. Can appear multiple
195 Similar, but for a single commit (patch). These notes will appear
196 immediately below the --- cut in the patch file.
198 Signed-off-by: Their Name <email>
199 A sign-off is added automatically to your patches (this is
200 probably a bug). If you put this tag in your patches, it will
201 override the default signoff that patman automatically adds.
202 Multiple duplicate signoffs will be removed.
204 Tested-by: Their Name <email>
205 Reviewed-by: Their Name <email>
206 Acked-by: Their Name <email>
207 These indicate that someone has tested/reviewed/acked your patch.
208 When you get this reply on the mailing list, you can add this
209 tag to the relevant commit and the script will include it when
210 you send out the next version. If 'Tested-by:' is set to
211 yourself, it will be removed. No one will believe you.
214 - Guinea pig moved into its cage
215 - Other changes ending with a blank line
217 This can appear in any commit. It lists the changes for a
218 particular version n of that commit. The change list is
219 created based on this information. Each commit gets its own
220 change list and also the whole thing is repeated in the cover
221 letter (where duplicate change lines are merged).
223 By adding your change lists into your commits it is easier to
224 keep track of what happened. When you amend a commit, remember
225 to update the log there and then, knowing that the script will
228 Patch-cc: Their Name <email>
229 This copies a single patch to another email address. Note that the
230 Cc: used by git send-email is ignored by patman, but will be
231 interpreted by git send-email if you use it.
233 Series-process-log: sort, uniq
234 This tells patman to sort and/or uniq the change logs. It is
235 assumed that each change log entry is only a single line long.
236 Use 'sort' to sort the entries, and 'uniq' to include only
237 unique entries. If omitted, no change log processing is done.
238 Separate each tag with a comma.
240 Various other tags are silently removed, like these Chrome OS and
248 Commit-xxxx: (except Commit-notes)
250 Exercise for the reader: Try adding some tags to one of your current
251 patch series and see how the patches turn out.
254 Where Patches Are Sent
255 ======================
257 Once the patches are created, patman sends them using git send-email. The
258 whole series is sent to the recipients in Series-to: and Series-cc.
259 You can Cc individual patches to other people with the Patch-cc: tag. Tags
260 in the subject are also picked up to Cc patches. For example, a commit like
264 commit 10212537b85ff9b6e09c82045127522c0f0db981
265 Author: Mike Frysinger <vapier@gentoo.org>
266 Date: Mon Nov 7 23:18:44 2011 -0500
268 x86: arm: add a git mailrc file for maintainers
270 This should make sending out e-mails to the right people easier.
272 Patch-cc: sandbox, mikef, ag
276 will create a patch which is copied to x86, arm, sandbox, mikef, ag and
279 If you have a cover letter it will get sent to the union of the Patch-cc
280 lists of all of the other patches. If you want to sent it to additional
281 people you can add a tag:
283 Cover-letter-cc: <list of addresses>
285 These people will get the cover letter even if they are not on the To/Cc
286 list for any of the patches.
292 The basic workflow is to create your commits, add some tags to the top
293 commit, and type 'patman' to check and send them.
295 Here is an example workflow for a series of 4 patches. Let's say you have
296 these rather contrived patches in the following order in branch us-cmd in
297 your tree where 'us' means your upstreaming activity (newest to oldest as
298 output by git log --oneline):
301 89234f5 Don't include standard parser if hush is used
302 8d640a7 mmc: sparc: Stop using builtin_run_command()
303 0c859a9 Rename run_command2() to run_command()
304 a74443f sandbox: Rename run_command() to builtin_run_command()
306 The first patch is some test things that enable your code to be compiled,
307 but that you don't want to submit because there is an existing patch for it
308 on the list. So you can tell patman to create and check some patches
309 (skipping the first patch) with:
313 If you want to do all of them including the work-in-progress one, then
314 (if you are tracking an upstream branch):
318 Let's say that patman reports an error in the second patch. Then:
321 <change 'pick' to 'edit' in 89234f5>
322 <use editor to make code changes>
324 git rebase --continue
326 Now you have an updated patch series. To check it:
330 Let's say it is now clean and you want to send it. Now you need to set up
331 the destination. So amend the top commit with:
335 Use your editor to add some tags, so that the whole commit message is:
337 The current run_command() is really only one of the options, with
338 hush providing the other. It really shouldn't be called directly
339 in case the hush parser is bring used, so rename this function to
340 better explain its purpose.
343 Series-cc: bfin, marex
346 Unified command execution in one place
348 At present two parsers have similar code to execute commands. Also
349 cmd_usage() is called all over the place. This series adds a single
350 function which processes commands called cmd_process().
353 Change-Id: Ica71a14c1f0ecb5650f771a32fecb8d2eb9d8a17
356 You want this to be an RFC and Cc the whole series to the bfin alias and
357 to Marek. Two of the patches have tags (those are the bits at the front of
358 the subject that say mmc: sparc: and sandbox:), so 8d640a7 will be Cc'd to
359 mmc and sparc, and the last one to sandbox.
361 Now to send the patches, take off the -n flag:
365 The patches will be created, shown in your editor, and then sent along with
366 the cover letter. Note that patman's tags are automatically removed so that
367 people on the list don't see your secret info.
369 Of course patches often attract comments and you need to make some updates.
370 Let's say one person sent comments and you get an Acked-by: on one patch.
371 Also, the patch on the list that you were waiting for has been merged,
372 so you can drop your wip commit. So you resync with upstream:
374 git fetch origin (or whatever upstream is called)
375 git rebase origin/master
377 and use git rebase -i to edit the commits, dropping the wip one. You add
378 the ack tag to one commit:
380 Acked-by: Heiko Schocher <hs@denx.de>
382 update the Series-cc: in the top commit:
384 Series-cc: bfin, marex, Heiko Schocher <hs@denx.de>
386 and remove the Series-prefix: tag since it it isn't an RFC any more. The
387 series is now version two, so the series info in the top commit looks like
391 Series-cc: bfin, marex, Heiko Schocher <hs@denx.de>
396 Finally, you need to add a change log to the two commits you changed. You
397 add change logs to each individual commit where the changes happened, like
401 - Updated the command decoder to reduce code size
402 - Wound the torque propounder up a little more
404 (note the blank line at the end of the list)
406 When you run patman it will collect all the change logs from the different
407 commits and combine them into the cover letter, if you have one. So finally
408 you have a new series of commits:
410 faeb973 Don't include standard parser if hush is used
411 1b2f2fe mmc: sparc: Stop using builtin_run_command()
412 cfbe330 Rename run_command2() to run_command()
413 0682677 sandbox: Rename run_command() to builtin_run_command()
419 and it will create and send the version 2 series.
423 1. When you change back to the us-cmd branch days or weeks later all your
424 information is still there, safely stored in the commits. You don't need
425 to remember what version you are up to, who you sent the last lot of patches
426 to, or anything about the change logs.
428 2. If you put tags in the subject, patman will Cc the maintainers
429 automatically in many cases.
431 3. If you want to keep the commits from each series you sent so that you can
432 compare change and see what you did, you can either create a new branch for
433 each version, or just tag the branch before you start changing it:
435 git tag sent/us-cmd-rfc
437 git tag sent/us-cmd-v2
439 4. If you want to modify the patches a little before sending, you can do
440 this in your editor, but be careful!
442 5. If you want to run git send-email yourself, use the -n flag which will
443 print out the command line patman would have used.
445 6. It is a good idea to add the change log info as you change the commit,
446 not later when you can't remember which patch you changed. You can always
447 go back and change or remove logs from commits.
453 This script has been split into sensible files but still needs work.
454 Most of these are indicated by a TODO in the code.
456 It would be nice if this could handle the In-reply-to side of things.
458 The tests are incomplete, as is customary. Use the --test flag to run them,
459 and make sure you are in the tools/patman directory first:
465 Error handling doesn't always produce friendly error messages - e.g.
466 putting an incorrect tag in a commit may provide a confusing message.
468 There might be a few other features not mentioned in this README. They
469 might be bugs. In particular, tags are case sensitive which is probably
473 Simon Glass <sjg@chromium.org>